Articles Posted by SeeSharp
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Booting up your new phone and going through everything in there is always a special experience, but this ritual is often soured by the presence of bloatware and unnecessary third-party apps.
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It seems my mission here is to bring to your attention unfamiliar and unfashionable truths about American history. Let me give you another one. The American West, the frontier, was NOT conquered and settled by a “Nation of Immigrants.” George Washington was already the fifth generation of his family in Virginia, as were most of his neighbours. There was a wave of Scots-Irish immigration before the Revolution. Thereafter, for almost a century, there was a trickle of immigrants but no wave. Not until the late 1840s, with the Irish potato famine and the Continental revolutions of 1848, was there another...
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When our ever-wise leader set up a program on the American West, he obviously had in mind the geographic west of North America—the Great Plains, mountains, and Pacific coast beyond the Colorado, Red, Arkansas, and Missouri rivers. But when Americans emerged onto the Great Plains in the second third of the 19th century, they were already the inheritors of two centuries of American Westering. The further West was but the last phase of this experience. Permit me in my two talks to deal mostly with that two century prelude, which is where my knowledge and my bent lie. When settlers...
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We use the term “reserve currency” when referring to the common use of the dollar by other countries when settling their international trade accounts. For example, if Canada buys goods from China, it may pay China in US dollars rather than Canadian dollars, and vice versa. However, the foundation from which the term originated no longer exists, and today the dollar is called a “reserve currency” simply because foreign countries hold it in great quantity to facilitate trade. The first reserve currency was the British pound sterling. Because the pound was “good as gold,” many countries found it more convenient...
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Beloved country singer and self-styled outlaw David Allan Coe was injured in a serious accident involving his SUV and a Peterbilt. Despite his car being hit so hard it ended up in a nearby parking lot, he and his two passengers were taken to the hospital with only non-life threatening injuries. Before we go attack the driver who almost deprived us of the singer of such greats as “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile,” “The Ride,” and “You Never Even Called Me by My Name,” you should know that (yet again) it was the 4-wheeler who was at fault, not the...
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Hundreds of protesters stormed a courtroom and attempted to make a citizens' arrest on a judge in support of a man challenging his council tax bill. In chaotic scenes, police rescued Judge Michael Peake from the clutches of a mob and escorted him safely from the County Court in Birkenhead, Merseyside. Officers were force to scramble over court benches to control the near riot as one protester shouted to 'seal the court'. Another sat in the judge's chair at the head of the court and declared the defendant be released.
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San Fransisco’s push for low-flush toilets has created a serious problem. There is not enough water flowing through the system, and so the back up has created a gigantic, city-wide stink. This can be fixed but only by pouring massive, unthinkable amounts of bleach into the sewer system, a prospect that has many people very alarmed. It’s the old story: intervention begets intervention. Perhaps we should think a bit less about “saving” water and start thinking about saving civilization.
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Fantastic set of aerial photos from Google Images (by way of Boston.com’s Big Picture), showing Florida’s developmental disaster. The images of half finished (and barely started) developments are strangely beautiful, with a geometric symmetry that belies the state of human misery these developments represent: Lost deposits, bankruptcy, misallocated capital. That an entire nation can be so innumerate as to believe in a mathematical fallacy is weirdly fascinating . . .
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Officially put at 85%, voter turnout was the highest in Iran’s history. Ahmadinejad won with 63%, collecting more votes than any of his predecessors. The results were arranged to give him a two-thirds majority among all categories of voters – men, women, young and old, poor and middle class, and in all of Iran’s 30 provinces. Whoever wrote the script also made sure that his three rivals, all veterans of the Khomeinist revolution, were roundly defeated even in their respective home towns.
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